Warm and Fuzzy

Part of the Obama message to America, as interpreted by Seattle cartoonist David Horsey:

As one may have guessed, there was very little uptake. And I think that was, at least in part because nothing was being done to amend the factors that led to people's fear, prejudice, anger and resentment. And people tend to see themselves as justified when they hold these emotions, because they understand them to be valid reactions to what's happening around them.

While I think that many people are willing to own up to fear and anger, especially when faced with loss or the perception of injustice; a willingness to admit to prejudice and resentment directed at others is less common. But when given the opportunity, acting on such feelings is much more common.

The Trump Administration has wasted no time action on the fears, angers, prejudices and resentments (spoken or otherwise) of its voter base, even while it convinces itself that it's acting on behalf of all Americans. And I think that part of what has made Donald Trump so successful as a politician is his ability to get other people to onboard his prejudices and resentment and treat them as their own. It might be easy to find a Democratic-leaning voter who will reflexively be against something, simply because President Trump is for it, but the President has convinced a substantial number of people that the difference between being qualified for government and not is whether someone is willing to sign on to whatever particular grievances he holds; in many cases, regardless of the consequences.

Barack Obama may have actually acknowledged people's feelings in a way that prior administrations had not, but he failed, for whatever reason, to really address them. Or at least, people felt that their feelings went unaddressed. (This is a strength of the conservative anti-government message; one can sabotage efforts to get things done, secure in the knowledge that claims of nefarious intent on the part of the actors will be believed.) And part of that is simply human nature.

Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.
Thomas Jefferson "Notes on the State of Virginia" 1785

I've  had people say nasty things about Thomas Jefferson when I trot this out, but only a few people have been willing to straightforwardly say that he's wrong. It's possible though to divorce this observation from race and simply attach it to politics. While, as I noted before, people are often loath to admit to deep rooted prejudices, they'll rattle off ten thousand recollections of injuries they feel they've sustained at the hands of other parties, and point out the new provocations those parties are yet engaged in. And so they retreat into their own parties, where the echo chamber tends to push them into believing untruths about the inhabitants of other echo chambers.

Politics and government, I suspect were never going to be able to solve the public's fears and anger, and so allow their prejudices and resentments to fade away. That's a job that the public needs to do for itself, and it's complicated by the fact that being the first to forgive a grievance is seen as weakness. Which may be why Barack Obama never really found the same traction with his message that Donald Trump found with his. Not in the sense of voters, necessarily, given that President Obama won a greater percentage of the popular vote and more electoral votes than President Trump had. But in the sense that Barack Obama was never able to use the loyalty of voters to himself, personally, as a tool to compel the obedience (or even servility) of his party.

Donald Trump doesn't ask that his supporters give up their security blankets. He helps the feel more secure when wrapped within them. I can understand the power of that.